There are lots of benefits to getting online for you and for us as your landlord. As technology and demands from customer evolve, there is a need for us to evolve as well.
But we recognise that not everyone can or wants to engage with us digitally and as such we promise to only develop digital services/offers that are optional for our customers and will always offer the option for a non-digital method of contact.
However we hope that our services are designed in such a way to make them easy to use and understand, and will have the necessary support in place to make use such services accessible to everyone.
As part of our digital strategy, we believe it's important that our customers are aware of what we're working on and what will soon become available to you. So we've created a roadmap that details what we've got coming up over the next year and how it may impact you.
The below items are actions that are currently underway and will go live in 2024:
We use digital noticeboards at our offices to communicate with our colleagues and this has been a huge success! So we want to share the benefits with our customers too - we’ll be trialing digital notice boards at a number of schemes and buildings to help share information in real time and promote localised information such as evacuation plans and repairs notices.
Over time, our IT systems and equipment need replacing as they can no longer support us in doing our jobs. However, the equipment itself is usable and works just fine, so we will be working to look at how we can re-purpose this equipment to help local groups, charities, or individuals break down the barriers to access digital services by donating our equipment rather than destroying it.
We’ll soon be upgrading our Customer Portal and looking to add in additional functionality such as more online forms, to allow you to access services where and when you want.
We are planning to give our chat bot 'Gabby' an update so it runs more effectively, allowing better conversations and answers to your questions.
We’ll be working on ability to share cleaning schedules and feeding back on services provided.
Working with our colleagues who help support and maintain your homes, we will be focusing on improving communication and providing customers with the ability to log repairs directly, to be able to pick appointments online and have more real time information on the status of the work.
We are investigating the ability to allow tenancy signups to be carried out digitally, which alongside our current physical sign-up process, will allow us to support customers who may have mobility concerns or simply have time commitments that means a digital offer works better for them.
You can now search for specific locations (eg. area, street) and find out how often a home becomes available in that area. Check it out here.
We have launched a new solution that enables our Customer Experience team to manage emails more effectively and efficiently; freeing up more time for us to respond to customer emails rather than having to manage them.
We have improved our website to help sign post and advise customers on how you can best get support digitally, whether this is direct from us or through partner agencies who specialise in digital support. Have a look at our new Digital Offer pages.
We are currently trialling WhatsApp as a new method for our customers to communicate with us, working like our online chat function and putting you in touch with us regardless of where you are.
